I visited Laas Geel in Somaliland a few days ago, and, at least to me, the painted caves seemed more interesting than many WHS, let alone many of the tentative sites.

We had this problem way back at the start of the "2014 exercise"!! In fact I started it all with a proposal in MAY 2008 which took us many years to conclude! - https://www.worldheritagesite.org/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=6&topic=21#ms g52
Assif said "I would recommend to exclude entries from the tentative lists since they are being considered anyway".
Meltwaterfalls said "I think we should include the Tentative list sites"
And we included both!
Note that, of the 117 sites we eventually considered c59 were not then on a T List (1 or 2 might have joined in the interim!!)
So, clearly there IS an interest in considering potential WHS which are NOT on a T List.
Perhaps the way round now is to divide it into 2 exercises?? i.e
a. The T List entries which are most important/worthwhile to get inscribed - possibly done via a complete T List "ranking". But a simple thumbs up/down will always tend to favour the well known - part of the "fun" is the discussion and "learning" is it not? How do we incorporate that?
b. The "best" not on a T List. Number/rules etc to be determined -but similar to the previous exercise. i.e agree a list and vote on it

You obviously have all the "aspiring" sites from our forum. Off the top of my head a few highlights:
* Salar de Uyuni including Incahuasi. Potentially crossing into Chile for Atacarma part of the desert.
* Vale Sagrado (or each of its components).
* Kanazawa Garden
* Trans Sib
* Plenty more of American NPs
* Lakes of Sweden
* West Coast of Ireland / Ring of Kerry / Aran Islands
* Castles of Scotland / Highlands
* Tonle Lake in Cambodia

I think others will come up with more. Being able to circumvent the "official" list I think needs to be part of the exercise.


I would favor a different approach: Create a new kind of site (Aspiring). In the database these would be normal tentative sites, but we would show them separately. If at all. This way we could keep the same approach for all and have a true, live missing list.

Els would be the judge when to create an entry for an aspiring site. I would also say whoever proposes one needs to write a description and a rationale, justifying the "aspiring" part.

I would tend to disagree. In the end when I voted I still faced the same problem of unknown sites and would favor those I knew about. The key part here will be to provide a description per site including those aspiring one.

Personally I would keep the voting open (live), but try to only publish after the first 20 voters are done, so this has a basis. Voting would count disregarding the "visited" flag, unlike for the WHS.

I would like to highlight another problem with the thumbs up/down method: it would not allow voters to distinguish between sites they find suitable for inscription and top missing ones. For example, I would be in favour of inscribing the SchUM Jewish sites in Germany, as they are an extraordinary testimony to Jewish life in mediaeval Europe and fill a gap, but no way I would put them in my list of 50 top missing sites.

Rating more than a thousand TWHS is bound to raise further difficulties. Most people would just rate the sites from countries they know. How can we convince voters to equally rate sites from Italy and Trinidad Tobago? Even for those who would be willing to vote on all TWHS (and additionally all non-TWHS proposals), how feasible is it to read all of the provided descriptions and pass an educated judgment? Accordingly, I would disprefer this attitude to evaluating just the sites that are actively brought forward by Forum members.

This could also be achieved by having a curated list of candidates. Els could just write a blog post or something and link all sites we deem especially important. Still, people could upvote other sites. For the aspiring ones a curation would be needed anyhow as they need to be created in the site first.


Well, looking at the overall rating we did for sites, the best sites are distinct from the worst sites. So having "endless" votes does not impair the order.

I did read up on the ratings subject a little and binary seems more relevant when personalization is intended. So proposal would be to have two scales.

* Favor inscription y/n. -> Community inscription chances.
* 5* rating. This would also allow comparisons to inscribed sites.

One issue I see is that our normal 5* rating score is build on visited sites only. I would be cautious to mix the two ratings as a consequence.

Can we update our newly inscribed sites:

#1 Bagan - Inscribed 2019
#18 Major Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright - Inscribed 2019
#21 Plain of Jars - Inscribed 2019
#32 The Sacred Complex of Babylon - Inscribed 2019
#42 Vatnajökull National Park - Inscribed 2019

Yes we can! ... Done

So is there still interest in an updated Top 50 list this year?

MichaelN
Somaliland is an unrecognized country like Taiwan. Somalia will not honor it with a nomination.

As it happens, even the internationally recognised State of Somalia hasn't yet ratified the World Heritage Convention (though it is a member of UNESCO). That is not for the want of trying by UNESCO - In June 2016 - Somalia promised UNESCO that ratification would be included in its next 2 year plan.

UNESCO does, however, still interact with both Somaliland and Puntland - as per this report from 2013 produced by a UNESCO team which actually mentions "Las Geel" . UNESCO has also carried out 2 missions to Las Geel (2010 and 2016) - See
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/nairobi/about-this-office/single-view/news/unesco_expert_mission_examines_the_state_of_conservation_of-1/

Looking through the new tentative ranking I feel that would be the Top 50 for Tentative sites but the votes are very low at the moment.

ELS
The "Status" entry for the List of Top missing can also be updated for sites which have recently been added to the T LIst
13 Shwe Dagon 2018
84 Chhatris of Orchha 2019 (They don't get a specific mention in the UNESCO description for the site which is titled simply "The historic ensemble of Orchha" -but must surely be encompassed?)

I note also that 3 of the sites are "Former T List" in part at least - if "easy" then it might be worth adding this info to their "Status" entry? Sometimes "former T List" sites get resurrected!!!
Oxford/Cambridge
Santorini CL
Kaieteur